Lemon Day Planning

Unexpected Changes

I expected my summer to unfold in a particular way. Using a suggestion from Angela Watson, I had established a focus for each week that would last me the rest of the summer months:

June 28-July 4: Planning and Reorganizing
Coming up with my summer vision, doing my PowerSheets quarterly refresh, reorganizing my main filing cabinet, putting my office back together after the ceiling leak
July 5-July 11: Refresh 1
This meant taking a real vacation–at home of course, because COVID–and giving myself permission to just rest and take it easy.
July 12-18: Household Loose Ends
The deep cleaning and miscellaneous tasks that I always put off during the school year
July 19-25: Media Studies
Creating a year plan and proposal for a Media Studies course I’d like to offer as an elective
July 26-Aug 1: Professional Refresh
Taking a week to stop and reflect on who I am as a teacher, what I want to achieve in the classroom and what my priorities will be in this unpredictable fall
Aug. 2-Aug. 8: Diversity Planning
Rebuilding my curriculum to do a better job at reflecting diversity and anti-racist educational goals
Aug. 9-15: Refresh 2 – Art Week
Another restful week, this time centered on viewing and creating works of art with my best friend
Aug. 16-22: Debate Camp
I’ll be attending virtually, as a coach.

That would bring me straight into my Ped Days that begin the school year.

I was pretty happy with this plan and I hoped it would help me avoid my frequent summer lethargy. However, partway through “Household Loose Ends” week, BAM! Some major personal developments arrived to shake everything up.

The one that requires the most work? We found the house we want to buy: recently renovated in an ideal neighbourhood, and ready to be occupied ASAP. We plan to move in right before school starts. Everything else has been put aside in order to conduct the negotiation process, secure financing (and provide the extensive documentation necessary for that), schedule inspections, plus notary, insurance, etc. This also means that I will be spending much of the time between now and moving day on the apartment: packing, cleaning, and trying to find a new tenant to finish out the lease.

Finding a house has been one of our major life goals for 2020. It was waylaid for a few months by the pandemic, but we were surprised to find a house we loved so quickly–and for it to be ready for occupation so soon after we found it. This is a much bigger priority than many of the work-related goals I had hoped to fulfill this summer, so I have no qualms about displacing them. Well, maybe that’s not strictly true. I do feel a sort of twinge of something like guilt that I won’t be able to give them the attention I meant to, but I know that I’m making room for something I know will really matter to me in the long term.

Maybe next year?

Planner Lineup 2020 – YouTube Launch

My first YouTube video is now live! I know it has flaws–the sound is way too low; I tried to fix it, but I’ll have to figure out how to do better next time–but I’m just pleased to have finally put something out there. Out of the 5 people who clicked on it, 1 of them clicked like. Thank you to whoever you are out there!

For my videos that are not PWMs, I would like to make a blog post to accompany each one, so here we are. To introduce my channel, I thought it would be nice to show what my current planner lineup is.

Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets 2020

I started with the PowerSheets in 2019, from the influence of some other planner people, and I started out with the 6-month undated version (the only one that is still available on the Cultivate What Matters website right now), just so I could see if I thought it was worth the investment. I love the process, even if I do find them pretty expensive. This past year, my husband was intrigued enough by the process to use the prompts himself.

I really like the PowerSheets because of the way they help you see your priorities in the big picture of your life, and find ways to carry that big picture into your everyday life. You can see the goals I’ve set up in my most recent quarterly refresh, and how I use the monthly “planner” page to keep track of how I take actions toward my goals each day. It felt redundant to try to use this as a planning spread–I have enough trouble using the monthly spread in my regular planner–and this way allows me to reflect on what I am treating as most important based on where I’m actually putting my time.

Using the PowerSheets is like putting the big rocks in your container before you put the smaller pebbles and sand, in that famous time-management priorities metaphor.

Teacher Planner

I skimmed over the details for this one, because I had taken apart my planner from the past school year and wasn’t ready to set up my new one. I make my own vertical planner layout in Excel that lets me fill in my class periods automatically, as well as lots of pages that help me keep track of all kinds of different information that I reference throughout the year. I have an ARC punch and discs, but I usually use a Happy Planner cover, since they are prettier and thinner. There will be a more detailed post and video about it closer to the beginning of fall.

Erin Condren Life Planner – Colourful Hourly Layout

I used to only use the teacher planner to keep track of my work and life. Watching planner channels gave me the idea of how I might be able to use a separate planner to allow me to see that my life is so much more than just my job. I was able to do this in starker relief with the old hourly layout that had half-hour slots. I would make the school day occupy fewer hours than it actually takes and renumber the rest, but even when it takes up its real space in the 2020 hourly setup, my work day is still dwarfed by all the other hours in the week. That was an important way to reset the way I was thinking about my life and my priorities.

I’m also happy with the way I came up with to use the dashboard/productivity pages as my health tracker. In the Monthly Goals section, I put which of the four PowerSheets goals I am prioritizing that month, with some of the more specific actions I want to focus on. The small lined box is where I write my church’s monthly worship themes and the titles given each service (btw, this is not a Christian church). In the finances section, I write opening and closing balances for all of my accounts.

Gratitude Journal

This well-loved notebook houses my daily gratitude pages. I decorate them with washi and stickers each month. Every day, I write down three good things or things that went well that day. It was originally recommended by my Crisis Intervention prof, who said there is real research on what a difference doing this can make for people suffering from depression, etc. I’m not going to show filled out pages, since they are very personal and usually make reference to people in my life who would prefer not to be identified. I give two lines to each good thing, since it’s important to say WHY it’s a good thing or why it makes you feel good.

Other Notebooks

Journal: This is my longest-standing tool to manage my life, my thoughts, and my feelings. I cannot recommend journaling enough. I’m always at my best when I am journaling regularly.
Bullet Journal: I used to keep a bullet journal instead of a planner. While I got tired of drawing tons of lines for the weekly layouts, I do still like making collections. You’ll see a couple examples on the bottom right. These are for longer-term lists, things I want to make more formalized and decorative so that it’s a pleasure to look back on them. This one is an Artist Loft dotted journal that I got from Michaels.
List Book: This book from Muji, with the creamy smooth paper, is one of my messier books. It houses lists. Sometimes they are themed lists, but other times they are just brain dumps. With all the decorative books, it’s good to have somewhere messy. Sometimes I’ll take notes on things like online workshops in this book, too.
Assorted Thin Notebooks: I like using small notebooks for specific projects, when I know I’m going to have a lot to say about a more complex issue.

I haven’t named all my notebooks, but I’ve covered the ones that I use nearly every day. What’s in your planner lineup?

Making a Vision Board, Pt. 2

After writing my last post, I took a calming afternoon to produce the physical version of the thoughts I’d written in the blog.

Materials

Surface: Any vision board needs to have a surface you are creating it on. Since this isn’t an all-encompassing vision for my life, I don’t feel the need to have it on display. So I chose to make it in the notebook where I have been compiling my notes and thoughts on this new venture.
Tools: scissors, glue/adhesive roller, paper trimmer, tweezers, exacto-knife, cutting board (to protect my desk)
Materials: I had sourced a number of images online which I resized and printed out, plus some old magazines, a little book of scrapbook paper and some sticker books (mostly Happy Planner, but some letters from an Erin Condren book).

Process

Search and Selection: It took quite some time to pick out all of the images and words I wanted to use. I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to divide the vision across four different aspects or questions, so I tried to ensure I picked things that would respond to those aspects. The fun part of this process is that it can feel like channeling messages from the universe, since it’s kind of random to see what will be on each page you turn. At the same time, I found this part a little discouraging or tedious, largely because I wasn’t happy with my selection of magazines and I wasn’t always able to find the kinds of things I had in mind. I used my scissors for the most part, and my mini exacto knife was really handy to extricate things from the middle of pages.
Composition: Once it felt like I had gathered enough (and was maybe a little fed up with cutting), I started to split them up by theme into the four pages I was going to be making. I matched up some scrap book paper, script stickers, and my online pictures to create each composition. This was fun but also frustrating at times, because my perfectionist imagination doesn’t often align with my actual skills. It’s important to do as much of the layout as you can before you start glueing so that you can be sure that everything fits and looks the way you want it to.
Glueing: I generally used an adhesive roller for the larger or more regular shapes, and an Elmer’s glue stick for the smaller or more finicky items. The layout evolves a little bit through errors or new adjustments.
Embellishment: After all the important things were down, I wanted to fill any empty spaces with embellishment, so I added little tiny stickers and some gold-foiled clear stickers to add interest and texture.

I didn’t feel as proud of the final results afterward as I expected I would. I felt like a lot of the nuance of the written text was missing from these images, in part because I couldn’t find everything I was looking for. Nonetheless, I’m going to show you what I did and explain some of the meaning behind it.

Page 1 – What is Lemon Day Planning?

I wanted this to give a little bit of the feel I want this project to have. I made a banner at the top, with an image close to the logo I’d like to create. I want to make things that are beautiful, vibrant and inspiring, but I also want my work to feel genuine and authentic. This means encouraging myself to “shine my light” and really share who I am, something that I can be slow to reveal in my life. I also included some text about doing things that make me happy and getting started today. I have often put off personal projects until I had perfect conditions, and I want to get past that. I made sure to include some pictures of lemon drop candies, some other shots of lemons that I like, and this bright teal blanket that really caught my eye when I was flipping around my magazines, which hints at wanting my audience to feel comfortable here.

Page 2 – What do I want Lemon Day Planning to be?

Here is where I discussed the goals of this project, which I see as a way of connecting with a wonderful community. By sharing myself, I want to connect with other people. By sharing my ideas, I want to be helpful to other people, in the same way that I have been helped by what I see in the planner community. I also see it as a way to stretch myself and my skills. I included a big stretch goal at the bottom right, which is to someday create tangible things that I can send to people. I also included the word “getaway” to signal that I also view working on my planner and all of this as a little bit of an escape or pause from everyday stresses, and it’s important that this project remain that and not become a stress of its own.

Page 3 – What does success look like?

I have intentionally not put things like subscriber, follower, or view numbers on this page. I picked images that represented the fruit of my labours (so more images of lemons that have been harvested or put in containers, or even transformed into a tart). The largest text is “distinction” and by that I mean recognition of some kind. When I reach out, I would some day like to see people reach back. That’s also why I included the word “belong.” Distinction also goes with “my signature” to mean that I develop a distinctive and recognizable style. The other phrases come from a home decor magazine spread and I see them as way that I could become good at what I do. “Yours for the asking!” means that these are all achievable things if I do the work.

Page 4 – What does success feel like?

This one probably turned out the oddest. Apparently it isn’t cool for people to smile big genuine smiles in home decor mags, so the only one I found was this woman smiling about her teeth feeling “squeaky clean”–great smile, but definitely bigger than I would have liked. Her smile definitely shows the way I want to feel. I want to feel happy, joyful, light and like I am doing something I love. I want to feel comfortable, at home, and relaxed. I also want to feel how I’ve grown: stronger and healthier and like I am capable of amazing things. It’s these feelings that will really let me know if I have been successful.

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t completely happy with these pages when I first made them. I even decided to print up what I wrote here in the blog and glue it on the back of page 4. However, now that I’ve explained the pages and put up these pictures, I am much happier with the overall result. I’m very glad to have done this thinking as I launch this project, because I know that having decided my values and goals will help me with a lot of decision making in the future.

Making a Vision Board, Pt. 1

I think I have always been a little intimidated by vision boards. I can’t really say what it is about them–maybe a fear of not finding the right images for what I want? making something ugly?–but it’s a task I have always shied away from. However, I’m on vacation this week and have been taking time to think about Lemon Day Planning and what I want this whole thing to be, so I’ve decided to try it out.

I watched several how-to videos with people’s vision boards, and I found the most useful video was from One Big Happy Life. She explained that a really powerful vision board is preceded by journaling. That’s really important and allays one of my biggest concerns: merely scanning through magazines or Pinterest or my quotes stickers seemed to offer the most superficial of visions. So I’m going to do some of that journaling here, organized around some questions I’ve been wanting to ask myself about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and what I want this to turn into. It’s a long post, so grab yourself a beverage and settle in.

Why did I start up Lemon Day Planning? (i.e. Where have I been?)

I have always been interested in organizing things and creating systems that feel satisfying. This is the ever distant goal of perfectionism. After I’d been bullet journaling for some time, I started discovering planners on YouTube. Bare-bones bullet journals (without all the decorating) had been very useful for me, but as I got more decorative, it became clearer that I was using it as a procrastination tool and more and more just going through the motions. Watching planners made me realize that I just didn’t enjoy drawing all these boxes over and over when they produced books that already had all the dates in them.

As I’ve gone through stressful times in my life, there was something soothing about watching like-minded women plan out their weeks and decorate their spreads, and soon enough, I wanted to be a part of it. I bought my first discounted EC Life Planner in March of 2019: an hourly neutral. I bought my second hourly Life Planner for 2020 and it was about a year after my first one that I started thinking about sharing it. I will also admit that I, like many others, was allured by the prospect of maybe making a sticker shop and putting beautiful things in the world.

I chose the name Lemon Day Planning because I wanted something that could be only as personal as I wanted to make it. I felt the name could transition well to a business or not. “Lemon Day” was something at an old job. I had a little tin of English lemon drops I’d bought at a speciality store, and every once in a while, I would pull out the tin to have one and share them with my colleagues. One of my colleagues started calling these days “Lemon Days” and I liked to think of them as little bright spots in dreary cubicle land. Additionally, lemons have a lot of other connotations that add an interesting subtext to the name, as something negative that can be turned around with the addition of a little sugar. Lemon desserts also happen to be some of my favourites.

What is Lemon Day Planning? What do I want it to be?

My personal hobby playground. I want to make pretty things and show them to other people. I want to get inspired and inspire others. I want it to be, above all, FUN.
A side hustle. Someday, I want to have something good to offer to people who are like me. Maybe that means organization and reflection tools, zany stickers that make people laugh, or boxes of little thoughtful things. It would also be nice to make some money doing something I enjoy.
A training ground. I want to improve my artistic and graphic design skills and this would be a project that enables me to do that.
A way of thinking through my life. I think it’s fair to say that we use planners to take stock of our lives, plan out our goals, and create the lives we want. I’ve tried to do this in isolation for a long time, and I’m ready to do this work out loud. I want to see concrete benefits from this process in my personal life.
A gateway to a community. Lemon Day Planning helps me live out my planner girl identity in a community of like-minded people. The recent upheavals aside, this has generally been a highly supportive community of cheerleaders and I want that in my life.
A source of fulfillment. That’s what we should try to make most things in our life, right?

What does success look like?

This is a big part of what “vision” means in this context. What wonderful things am I trying to summon into my life? I’m not really going to spend much time on numbers. I’m nearing my first hundred Instagram followers, but mere follows seem kind of empty. I probably wouldn’t enjoy learning just how many of them are businesses who would like me to buy something. So instead, what success on Instagram or on YouTube looks like to me is people engaging with my content by leaving me comments. What that looks like more concretely is getting notifications whenever I open the app that someone has commented on something I posted. It also means responding and engaging in real conversations.

Another thing success looks like is getting better and better at making this stuff. I want to make spreads that make me smile, make videos that I can feel proud of. I want to see that each time I do it, it’s a little bit better.

Success looks like learning and growing as a person. Participation in this community has already helped me see things about the world and myself that I had never noticed before. I want this joyful hobby to add meaning to my life and help me achieve my overall life goals.

Success looks like putting something good into the world and bringing something back in return. I know many people begin with sharing their spreads and soon enough transition into full-on side hustles. It would be nice to make a little money to help finance this hobby or, even better, contribute to my family and personal goals. I would like to know that my way of making money brings something good into the world and doesn’t compromise my morals.

Lastly, I would be lying if I didn’t mention that what success will really look like for me is recognition. I want to be seen by the community and I want to interact with these women I have looked up to. In order for that to happen, I have to put myself out there, let my personality shine, and show what I have to contribute.

What does success feel like?

Tasha from One Big Happy Life said this is one of the most important parts. In thinking about this, I find that a bunch of fears come up for me. I worry that in the pursuit of these dreams, I will feel rushed and overworked, that I’ll only be putting myself through unnecessary strain and will have less capacity to handle more important things in my family and work life. So it’s important that my vision address those concerns. There are a few feelings I am looking for:

Flow: When I am successful, I will set aside time to work on this and really concentrate. I will get in the zone and find all my worries and troubles melting away. I feel like the more I practice, the easier it will be to achieve this state of flow. I want this feeling in my life.
Fun and Excitement: This is something I will feel from doing the work, enthusing over the work of others, and from the sense of community that I am part of and contributing to.
Satisfaction and Pride: With practice and steady effort, I will keep improving and develop more pride in my work and in myself. I will look back on a body of work and feel satisfied.
Love and Joy: This is truly the main goal of my efforts. I created Lemon Day Planning to share and develop a hobby that I love and I want to do this in a community.

Final Thoughts

Wow. Just this journaling part has been immensely valuable and strangely energizing. With this work done, I have a much better idea of what kinds of images I would be looking for and how I’d like my vision board itself to take shape. Now it seems really fun! I really look forward to what the result will be!

Block Schedules

Before you go any further, make sure you watch Jordan Page’s video on the topic: The “Block Schedule” System – LIFE CHANGING productivity hack! It is the basis of everything that follows. No seriously, go watch it! I’ll be here when you get back.

Why I Needed It

Life as a teacher is hectic. I am also something of an overachiever/perfectionist, and I was really struggling to achieve work-life balance. When Jordan Page’s video showed up in my suggested videos, it seemed like a way to finally reign in the chaos of my schedule and give me a way to find everything has a place. So I decided to give it a try.

Block Schedule 2020

This is how I started out the year. I drew this in the first week of my planner and I used washi tape to mark out the blocks in my weekly spread. One of my major goals was to start policing the boundaries between work and life in order to achieve better balance. I liked setting the morning aside for personal development instead of trying to work during those 20 minutes for breakfast. I liked feeling that there was genuine consistency in how I spent my time. There were, however, a few sticking points in this schedule:

Marking on spares has been really difficult for me. There are a lot of distractions in my day, I haven’t completed the prep I need for upcoming class periods, I feel tired, I am procrastinating, etc.
I had a lot of trouble doing the work block on Saturday, often because of family/home obligations, or sincere fatigue, so I fell even more behind in my marking.
I still spent those evening blocks feeling guilty for not being productive, even though I needed the time to decompress, because I felt so hurried much of the time and I didn’t feel like I was keeping up with all of the things there were to do.
I don’t think I was usually able to get to bed by 10 p.m., which left me feeling really tired.

Pandemic Block Schedule 1

Then the pandemic struck, and everyone’s schedules went out the window. Schools in my area were closed as of March 13th, and we were actually barred from teaching online, especially to try to cover new material for the first two months of the pandemic. My husband was working at home, so I decided to move to an alternate sleep schedule so that we could each have some time to ourselves every day.

As you can probably tell, this was a good time for me. I recognize that I have been very fortunate and that many people have had a really difficult and horrible time during this crisis. I know it’s not fair (a number of privileges here), but I experienced what it was like to genuinely relax for the first time since the summer leading into 10th grade. Starting in grade 11, I always had at least one job while studying full time, I have had other jobs on top of teaching and have earned additional certificates while teaching. I was burying myself in my exacting expectations for myself and I was in the early stages of considering going on stress leave. So this was time that I needed–even more than I initially realized.

In the month of May, Jordan Page offered her Productivity Bootcamp materials free for the whole month. I went through the program and was feeling really inspired to reset my block schedule right when we were finally allowed to start teaching (right after Victoria Day). This brings us to…

Pandemic Block Schedule 2

I have really appreciated getting reacquainted with the morning! The walking has made a very big difference in my energy levels and mental health. Teaching online was really strange (I may write a post about this in the future), but this was a schedule that was pretty manageable.

Vacation Block Schedule? What about the fall?

I am now on summer break, but I haven’t decided whether I will create a block schedule for this time. I am taking this week completely off from anything scheduled. This has meant staying up a little later and sleeping in a little longer. I am still going for a walk most days, though I am taking it a little easier as it is much warmer out. I’ve used the last two Sundays as rest days (prior to that I had gone every day for a month and a half).

There is no way to tell right now what the fall will look like. Last I heard, the plan was for schools to reopen, though the senior grades may be on an altered schedule. It’s too early to tell what the status of the pandemic will be and we’ve had a dizzying number of changes in directives, so I’m not really paying too much attention to all this over the summer. I’m going to work on my courses later in the summer, and I will do so in a way that will be enable an easy transition to hybrid or all online instruction should the need arise.

When the fall comes, I will try to make a new block schedule, using the experiences I’ve had so far to make it even better.

Do you use a block schedule? Are you thinking of giving it a try?

Plannergeddon

The planner world on Instagram blew up this week. I wanted to take a moment to record my thoughts as someone who has been following the community for about a couple years now but has only recently started posting and participating.

I would say that trouble started brewing with the resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. These powerful protests in response to the continued injustices of the treatment of African Americans and other people of colour, not just in the criminal justice systems but in society at large, have caused a lot of White people to start reckoning with the privileges and advantages that have been conferred to us by an unjust society. The planner community has a lot of white people in it, and people of colour have been struggling to have their voices heard. This reckoning in the planner community has taken several forms: posts in support of BLM, promotion of Black-owned channels and businesses, #blackouttuesday when many people posted a black square to avoid distracting from these essential protests, and different planner challenges, such as the #blmplannerchallenge. Here is my spread for the challenge:

Many of the responses by individual planners have been very positive. Speaking out and showing support for a movement is probably new to a lot of us. I have been trying to inform myself as much as possible. Systemic racism is not a new concept for me, but I’ve been able to live my life in a way that ignores it, because I am white. While I have taken tentative steps as a teacher to improve the diversity of our reading lists, I have most definitely not done enough. In this period I have been reading voraciously, seeking out content sources by black creators and other people of colour, in particular so that I can share them with students and discuss what has been going on. My next planner challenge that I am working on is the #happyforchangechallenge where I will create the list of actions that I will take to continue support for the Black Lives Matter movement past the flurry of action that everyone has been taking over the last two weeks.

Two of the major planner companies, Erin Condren and Happy Planner, received criticism for being late to express support for BLM. They said nothing at first, and in some quarters, their eventual response was also viewed as inadequate. Happy Planner apparently had a Facebook post in which the word “everyone” was emphasized, which reminded many of the “all lives matter” response to BLM that demonstrates how people really don’t understand what BLM even means.

However, things really hit the fan this week when the following article started circulating online: Mira Costa High Class of 2020 forges new tradition from pandemic. Go read it and come back. You should be able to deduce what kinds of objections a lot of people have:

This event is a major violation of public health policies meant to stem the spread of COVID-19. The people involved are not socially distanced and hardly anyone is wearing a mask. This is the reason that the event was originally being blocked by county authorities and was not sanctioned by the school itself.
The students apparently used a “loophole” which allowed a Black Lives Matter protest to take place earlier this month. There is a key disconnect that many associate with the privileged status of these families. BLM protesters are justified in gathering over the life-and-death situation facing people of colour in North America–and they are also predominantly respecting health guidelines to do it as safely as possible. A high school graduation is not a life-and-death matter that needs immediate action. It is a celebration that most kids have had to give up this year. These families weren’t able to accept being told no for the sake of the entire community.
Many observers feel certain that if the students hadn’t been white, the event would not have been able to go forward and/or students might have been hurt or killed by the police.
Erin Condren is quoted in the article suggesting (probably as a joke) how they would lie to the police to try to allow their event to continue. A rich white lady would be able to get away with that, while many other citizens would not, with possibly disastrous consequences.

In response, a number of highly prominent members of the planner community announced on Instagram that “We are taking a break.” They will no longer be promoting EC products until they get satisfactory answers from the company. Many other people have chosen to stop using their EC planners, to never give the company another dime, and in some cases even to destroy their products. This, too, has received its own backlash, from people outraged at “cancel culture” striking again and viewing this public calling out as a form of bullying and an unwillingness to forgive people for mistakes.

I am only peripherally involved with the planner community at this point. I will say that I’ve always noticed that some people seem to have created their social influencer businesses in a way that heavily depends on being affiliated with the Erin Condren brand (and the same can be said for the Happy Planner people). They get all kinds of free stuff whenever it releases and publish mostly gushing reviews on their channels. People follow their channels in order to get these “sneak peaks” of upcoming Erin Condren products or to see what new ways they are going to set up and use these products, which allows the viewers to justify ordering the products, which makes money for the company. They usually tell us that they give “honest” opinions, but I really don’t think that is fully possible when they are clearly so financially entangled, and increasing numbers give up their day jobs to produce content and physical products (stickers) based on the things Erin Condren makes. There is such a huge ecosystem of sticker creators who make everything to fit in an EC planner, and I’ve always wondered if that was a safe bet.

Erin Condren posted a lukewarm apology on her personal Instagram. The company CEO, Tonia Misvaer, responded yesterday to disown the actions that Erin Condren and her family had taken. They made a promise not to fail the community again. An hour before I sat down to write this, Erin Condren posted another apology and announced that she would be taking a leave of absence from the company. Some people in the comments thought this was the right step, other people thought it just sounds like a vacation and think she should be permanently stepping down, and others decried that she is being removed from the company she built from the ground up. It seems like these are major rifts that the community will struggle to get past.

For myself, I am disgusted and angered by the graduation party those parents sanctioned and Erin Condren apparently helped organize. I agree with all the objections people have to it. I’m not really sure why people are so surprised. I guess when we invest in something, we want to feel like we have a home there. I think she has made some beautiful products that I have spent money on. I’m definitely putting a pause on buying more of them, but I am going to continue using the ones I have. I bought my 2021 planner on the launch day, and I’m not budgeting to get another one. We’ll see how things look for 2022.

It is most frustrating that so much in the community has been invested in one person and the products she has made, because now that seems to be ruining things for everyone. I think the community needed her to look up to, and is wrestling with what her poor behaviour now says about them. I wonder if this utopian community will be capable of piecing itself back together. I’m sorry that this has happened just as I wanted to take my place among them. It feels like I’ve missed out on a golden age that may never return.

P.S. I have borrowed this post title from the podcast Planners and Wine who released an emergency bonus episode to talk about these controversies. If this issue concerns you, it’s worth a listen. I’m definitely going to stay tuned to their podcast.

Hello Again from Unusual Times

2020 was the year that I decided to take my planning hobby a little more seriously. What a crazy year it has been so far.

My evolution as a planner definitely began in my schooling days. I was an avid user of my school agenda, and often liked to cover the sections of the code conduct with pictures and information pages of things I was interested in (lots of astrology for some reason). I used colour-coding and would hand decorate many of the pages.

In the years since then, I have used a number of different school agendas, personal planners, bullet journals, and a homemade teacher planner. As I started to discover bullet journalers on YouTube, I started to notice other people using printed planners. Cindy Guentert-Baldo was my main gateway here. I found her from her bullet journal (finally someone who felt authentic!), but started to look for other planners when I saw her using her Erin Condren planner as well. I have learned a lot from Cindy that has become essential to my life. I’m so grateful.

I didn’t consider buying one of those fancy Erin Condren planners until I started watching PlanwithLaken and she decided to try an hourly planner in which she condensed the work day into fewer hours to make more space to represent her personal life. At the time, I was struggling with work-life balance and feeling nearly constantly stressed out by the demands of my job. I was using a teacher planner that I had made for myself as my only planner, and I realized that planning that way was obviously making teaching the main priority, since my teaching periods and work to-do lists took up nearly the entire spread. So in March of 2019, I decided to try pick up a discounted hourly Erin Condren Life Planner and try imagining my life outside of work.

It took me some time to work out how I wanted to use and decorate it, but with a little help from Jordan Page (Fun Cheap or Free)’s block schedule, I got into a groove. Now suddenly, I could see how many hours were available to me that I didn’t have to spend on work. I could see my personal life and my personal goals as something worth celebrating and investing in. With influence from Cindy and Laken, I also decided to get the 6-month Power Sheets goal planner, and I can really see how much my life is transforming into what I want it to be.

When the pandemic struck, I thought I might finally have a little extra time to start Instagramming my planner, like so many other women out there. There is a lot going on on YouTube, but I discovered that there is so much more happening on Instragram and so much inspiration out there to discover. I started snapping pictures of my planner and I’ve been filming “practice” plan with me videos.

So here I am starting with this blog again. I’d still like to do some of those things I initially set out to do, but I’d also like to use this space to talk about how I am planning my life and what my dreams and goals are. I hope you will enjoy this journey with me.

Meal Prep Magic

When you’re feeling overwhelmed by teaching, it’s easy to get into some bad habits. You keep hitting snooze and don’t make time for breakfast. You’re too busy during the day to eat a snack (if you brought one) or to get lunch from the caf (because you didn’t pack one). You’re so hungry and exhausted at the end of the day that cooking seems impossible, so you get takeout, yet again. You feel like you are constantly in survivor mode, so you permit yourself another can of Coke from the staffroom vending machine.

This is what a really bad time teaching can look like for me. But good weeks are also possible, and they start on the weekend. One important way to think of self-care is doing things for future you.

Saturday mornings, I go grocery shopping. I try to get there between 8 and 9 a.m. This works for me (I don’t have kids) because there are few other people in the store and often the shelves are really full and still have the nicest produce left. I also like to get the day going early because I have plans for the afternoon (to be detailed in a future post).

It’s very important to eat breakfast before going to the grocery store–if I’m hungry, I tend to come home with all sorts of stuff that looked really appetizing but we don’t need. I eat breakfast while I plan out my meals. Following advice from Jordan Page (funcheaporfree.com), I “shop” my own fridge and pantries first to see what food I need to use up and plan meals accordingly. Her other money-saving tip is to look at the front and back pages of the grocery store flyers during this process so that your meals work with what’s on sale, but… I think I’ll consider that an opportunity for future growth.

Sunday mornings, I put on some podcasts and make as much for the week as I can manage.

What do I make?

Breakfasts for the week: I am not very interested in most standard breakfast food and this was a meal I was skipping. Now, I like to prepare things like a bean or lentil salad, roasted vegetables, a chicken pie, boiled eggs, bagel with salmon spread (ambrosia as far as I am concerned), or a cucumber salad. I have historically done a bad job of getting enough vegetables, so I try to get 1 or 2 servings in at breakfast. I cook a selection of these foods in advance so I just have to assemble a plate in the morning. Hot tip: slice your bagels in half and stick them in the freezer–they don’t go mouldy and you can pop them right in the toaster!
Lunches for the week: In warmer months, I’ll prep salads or wraps. Using baby spinach instead of lettuce lets you prepare all five salads at once because it doesn’t wilt or get rusty. I just chop the cucumber and add the salad dressing the morning of. For colder weather, I like to make one dish meals, like Spanish rice, Cuban beans, chicken biryani, or some other recipe I’ve concocted to use a starch, a meat and some vegetables. I’ll make a pot of it and divide it into easy-to-grab containers right away.
Snacks for the week: I need one for recess in the morning, one for right after school, and a back-up in case I’m working late after school. I like to have a fruit or vegetable and some protein. Some combos: Royal Gala apple + cheddar cheese cubes, peach + smoked almonds, cucumber + hummus, raspberries + raspberry Greek yogurt. The backup is supposed to be simple to eat on the bus or walk home. I pre-cut it and put it in small containers to pop in my lunch bag.
Any dinners I have time for. I’m trying to see if there are ways I can pre-prep some of the items I will cook, but failing that, I need meals that can come together quickly so that I am less tempted to just buy something.

I’ve been pretty good so far this school year with this strategy. I love having good snacks available and I’m getting better about reminding myself to eat them at appropriate times to give myself breaks during the day.

I’m trying not to pay too much attention to fat content or number of calories, but I am trying to pick food I will enjoy eating and that will help me keep my mood more even during the day. This week’s salad turned out really fun: baby spinach, Persian cucumber, cherry tomatoes, strawberry, pecans, cranberry goat cheese, some croutons, and a raspberry vinaigrette. So certainly not the most healthy, but overall better than many other choices I might have made. I don’t mind having the same meals all week because I know I’ll have something completely different next week.

The biggest challenge is when other plans come up on the weekend. For example, I’m my school’s debate coach, and many of the tournaments have been taking place on a Saturday, which disrupts the groceries. There are also family and social events that I want to prioritize. When I don’t have groceries, I can’t prep the meals on Sunday. I’m going to make an effort to get around that by shopping on a week night if I know that Saturday is occupied.

This is a wagon I hope to stay in, because it makes the ride a lot less bumpy.

First Week Come and Gone

I’m at my desk at home after the first week back at school. I have already experienced a wide variety of emotions:

Excitement. I had a really great summer and feel very inspired upon my return to school. Last year, I was missing the usual push of excitement that I normally get at the beginning of the school, but it’s back this year with even stronger force. I’ve always looked forward to the beginning of the school year. As a child, I really loved the cooler weather, getting back into the routine, getting new school supplies, and meeting my new teachers and classmates. I feel excited now about starting fresh, trying out ideas I’ve had in mind to improve my teaching, meeting my new students, and getting into a more structured routine.
Fatigue. We do a lot of running around in the first ped days before the students come back. So I’m definitely having to get used to the rhythm, not to mention the hours. I’m a natural night owl, so it can be hard to get myself to bed by a reasonable hour. I don’t have problems waking up, but I do start to feel it later in the day when I haven’t had enough sleep.
Frustration. A lot of the systemic and interpersonal stresses that upset me during the year come back with a vengeance, and risk popping my current bubble of positivity. For example, this was simply the perfect time for one of the photocopiers to break down, leading to unnecessary interpersonal conflict. Outside of the time we spend running around trying to take care of a million little details, we spend a lot of time in meetings, which can sometimes get bogged down as different people address their own personal concerns.
Satisfaction. One thing I did to make this beginning of the year a little easier is create a checklist for myself of all the things I have to do. It really helped me keep track of what I had going on and allowed me to always see what to do next. I definitely missed some items, but I will add them for next year. I’m definitely pleased with how this worked out, and I feel very well prepared for when the students return on Tuesday.

One thing I’ve noticed so far is how quickly school concerns highjacked my life this week. That’s something that I’ve been wanting to avoid. I had trouble getting myself home in time to make a proper dinner. My hope for this week is to do more to prep dinner on the weekend (indeed, I am going to try to make some of the meals ahead of time). I did a good job with breakfast, lunch and snacks, but dinner still needs work. I also need to leave school at a more reasonable hour.

I also need to get up probably a half hour later than I did this week. I want to have time in the morning for some creative work, and that didn’t work out so much in this first week.

I’ll try to be patient with myself as the elements of my routine start to shape up and fall into place. I think some goals I have are to

Make time for my creative life (choirs, writing, art)
Take better care of myself (sleep, exercise, diet)
Notice my thinking patterns to manage my stress
Establish consistent working habits to stay on top of corrections and other work.

Wish me luck!

School Year Is Coming…

In 17 days, I go back to school. We have 4 ped days, a holiday Monday, and then the students return.

I’m delighted to be spending the upcoming week at a writing retreat for teachers. It proposes to help us improve the way we teach writing by having us write. I’m delighted to be bringing some creative writing back into my life.

Then I will have one week to “prepare” before going back to school. What does that entail?

Deep cleaning the house. I’m just not sure when will be my next chance to do this, so I’d better get it done now. This is in the category of “doing something for my future self.”
Repairs, tailoring, new glasses. There are a number of tasks I’d told myself I would “do this summer” that haven’t been done yet. These include getting my fall boots re-soled, getting a jacket adjusted so that I will actually be excited to wear it, and getting new glasses with my updated prescription (my look needs a refresh).
Gather and clean the water bottles, travel cups and plastic containers I will be bringing to and from school.
Finish my online course. I’d rather not have it as a loose end.
Create my new planner layout for the year (more on that in a future post).

There are a number of other tasks that would have been nice, but I’ve now realized that there is no point in putting them on my to-do list over and over if I know that I won’t realistically have time to do them. I will be keeping them on a “Would Be Nice” list and then moving on with my life.